Marketing professionals are feverishly enthusiastic about "social media marketing marketing." Social media includes websites where huge variety of users provide their particular content and create connections and relationships by sharing information and following each other's updates. You will find dozens, and perhaps hundreds of those sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Spoke, ecademy, Classmates, Friendster and Flickr, where people exchange business and personal information, status updates, photographs, videos, news articles, political views, resumes, sexual interests, sports opinions, recipes, health facts and endless levels of other data.
It doesn't end there. Social media marketing also contains the usage of blogs, videos, discussion forums and creating ways to permit customers to offer feedback and ratings on the pages of your websites. And a lot more. It's tremendously valuable and some organizations have done a good job getting real value out of these social media marketing marketing efforts.
Let me tell you, you will find massive marketing benefits available to marketers who can work out how to harness the attention and preferences of audiences using social media marketing tools. Everywhere you turn in the marketing world, folks are promoting the value of engaging social media marketing for businesses purposes. I quickly went through a week's worth of emails to get invitations to wait or view whitepapers, webinars and conferences. Here is a sampling of what I've received during the last 7 days: smm panels list
How exactly to Produce a Social Media Strategy That Works For Your Brand
Connecting Constant Contact and Social Media for Internet Marketing Success
Free webinar - Webcasting + Social Media Increase Attendance: An UNLEASH09 Case Study
The Best of Both Worlds: How exactly to Effectively Leverage Social Media Relationships with Real-Time Collaboration Tools
Email Gone Viral: How To Extend Email Reach Through Social Sharing
2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarketing Study
Service in the Time of the Social Customer
Understanding Your Online Reach
Generate a Buzz for Your Business Through Social Media Marketing. Convert that Buzz into Revenue.
5 Killer Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page
Now, I donate to several marketing newsletters, but you will find a huge selection of others and this list represents merely a week of emails -- and I probably missed some. Marketing via social media marketing is white hot -- the level of excitement is off the charts.
Social media, however, cannot yet substitute entirely for other, more traditional kinds of marketing. Recently, I was on an "expert panel " at an advertising event and the audience was breathlessly stoked up about social media. At one point, most of us panelists were asked to comment on the value of the new channel and when it was my turn, I stated that while I believed social media marketing would someday provide enormous marketing value, I was concerned that individuals were focusing too much effort and attention on it. I stated that, in my view, there is probably no huge "first mover advantage" in working out how to market successfully via social media marketing and so it was important to keep to utilize email, direct mail, direct sales, telesales, advertising and other channels for now. I said that folks should make sure they stayed current with that which was happening in social media marketing and they must be constantly experimenting, but, since no one has yet cracked the code on measuring the results of those new opportunities, it was important not to have distracted from demand generation methods we currently use that individuals know are effective.
These statements won me a lot dirty looks and I felt like I'd just announced that I was predicting a significant comeback in Yellow Pages advertising. Several people in the audience probably dismissed any notion of hiring my company to do marketing consulting for them and I think there could have been murmurs of organizing a lynch mob.
The odd thing is that I just am very stoked up about the potential of social media marketing marketing and we utilize it in my company everyday. I recently believe that its value as a form of demand generation isn't clearly understood yet and, since it's not so measurable, it flies in the face of responsible marketing for many companies to devote inordinate levels of resources to it.
We are inclined in marketing to think that new channels make old ones obsolete. Like, when email began to achieve in popularity and effectiveness, many marketers figured direct mail was on its way out. Oddly enough, email marketing, to some degree, became a victim of its own success. Spam grew at a faster rate than quality email, and soon customers'in-boxes were laden up with so much garbage that system administrators all over the country became more aggressive at filtering out unwanted email. Unfortunately, a lot of top quality email, much which customers had subscribed to, got caught in spam filters. Deliverability rates of email marketing campaigns dropped precipitously and the entire medium has lost a number of its effectiveness. The web result is that direct mail, good old fashioned printed offers sent through the USPS, has made somewhat of a comeback. The death of direct mail was highly exaggerated.
Something similar will probably happen to social media marketing marketing and I think it's already started. Like, I get many emails telling me that folks have started to follow along with me on Twitter. These emails contain no details about my new fans, merely a cryptic user name, which I can click on if I do want to see who it is. What I can see is that a growing number of these "followers" are providers of porn and are most likely signing up to follow along with tens of thousands of unsuspecting Twitter users like me. If this continues unchecked, I won't be considered a Twitter user for long because, as it turns out, I'm not actively seeking more junk mail in my in box. I suspect you are not, either.
My own, personal company has yet to generate any business from our social media marketing efforts. "Old" methods like telephone calls, emails, speaking at conferences and networking still drive most of our business. When I started Real Results Marketing five and a half years back, I resolved to undergo my contacts and either email or telephone people in my network every month. To this day, most of the business opportunities we uncover happen through this kind of work and former colleagues are still the richest source of consulting deals. It's a real struggle sometimes to produce myself take time out of an active day to produce those calls or send those emails, but they've proven so vitally important to your revenue stream that I don't dare let up on these efforts.
I realize that most businesses can't count on the founder's professional network as a primary type of demand generation. Bigger companies have their particular tried-and-true methods for driving growth. Your company may utilize a sales force, telesales personnel, advertising campaigns, sophisticated database marketing initiatives and other tools for creating sales opportunities and I'd argue that the importance of those approaches hasn't diminished one bit in the face of social media marketing growth.
Whatever did for you historically should be the primary focus of your sales and marketing. You want to keep plugged directly into social media marketing and, by all means, attend workshops, conferences and seminars on the subject. It might even be considered a smart investment to devote a headcount or two to doing nothing but experimenting with these exciting new marketing tools.
Someday, someone will master how to market effectively and measurably via social media. Once that happens, most of us in marketing should discover ways to adapt those discoveries to your businesses and utilize them to operate a vehicle sales and profits. Until that time, however, marketers should focus most of these resources on the equipment they understand to allow them to surpass their primary responsibility of driving profitable, longterm growth for his or her employers.
I've joked that I've become the leading advocate for "antisocial media marketing." I'm actually a big supporter of those exciting new channels -- not at the cost of marketing techniques which have been shown to work. Nonetheless, my less extreme position on the subject probably means I won't be voted the most popular speaker at marketing conferences in the future. I'll just to possess to be certain I stay one step in front of the lynch mob and keep making my networking calls month after month.
It doesn't end there. Social media marketing also contains the usage of blogs, videos, discussion forums and creating ways to permit customers to offer feedback and ratings on the pages of your websites. And a lot more. It's tremendously valuable and some organizations have done a good job getting real value out of these social media marketing marketing efforts.
Let me tell you, you will find massive marketing benefits available to marketers who can work out how to harness the attention and preferences of audiences using social media marketing tools. Everywhere you turn in the marketing world, folks are promoting the value of engaging social media marketing for businesses purposes. I quickly went through a week's worth of emails to get invitations to wait or view whitepapers, webinars and conferences. Here is a sampling of what I've received during the last 7 days: smm panels list
How exactly to Produce a Social Media Strategy That Works For Your Brand
Connecting Constant Contact and Social Media for Internet Marketing Success
Free webinar - Webcasting + Social Media Increase Attendance: An UNLEASH09 Case Study
The Best of Both Worlds: How exactly to Effectively Leverage Social Media Relationships with Real-Time Collaboration Tools
Email Gone Viral: How To Extend Email Reach Through Social Sharing
2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarketing Study
Service in the Time of the Social Customer
Understanding Your Online Reach
Generate a Buzz for Your Business Through Social Media Marketing. Convert that Buzz into Revenue.
5 Killer Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page
Now, I donate to several marketing newsletters, but you will find a huge selection of others and this list represents merely a week of emails -- and I probably missed some. Marketing via social media marketing is white hot -- the level of excitement is off the charts.
Social media, however, cannot yet substitute entirely for other, more traditional kinds of marketing. Recently, I was on an "expert panel " at an advertising event and the audience was breathlessly stoked up about social media. At one point, most of us panelists were asked to comment on the value of the new channel and when it was my turn, I stated that while I believed social media marketing would someday provide enormous marketing value, I was concerned that individuals were focusing too much effort and attention on it. I stated that, in my view, there is probably no huge "first mover advantage" in working out how to market successfully via social media marketing and so it was important to keep to utilize email, direct mail, direct sales, telesales, advertising and other channels for now. I said that folks should make sure they stayed current with that which was happening in social media marketing and they must be constantly experimenting, but, since no one has yet cracked the code on measuring the results of those new opportunities, it was important not to have distracted from demand generation methods we currently use that individuals know are effective.
These statements won me a lot dirty looks and I felt like I'd just announced that I was predicting a significant comeback in Yellow Pages advertising. Several people in the audience probably dismissed any notion of hiring my company to do marketing consulting for them and I think there could have been murmurs of organizing a lynch mob.
The odd thing is that I just am very stoked up about the potential of social media marketing marketing and we utilize it in my company everyday. I recently believe that its value as a form of demand generation isn't clearly understood yet and, since it's not so measurable, it flies in the face of responsible marketing for many companies to devote inordinate levels of resources to it.
We are inclined in marketing to think that new channels make old ones obsolete. Like, when email began to achieve in popularity and effectiveness, many marketers figured direct mail was on its way out. Oddly enough, email marketing, to some degree, became a victim of its own success. Spam grew at a faster rate than quality email, and soon customers'in-boxes were laden up with so much garbage that system administrators all over the country became more aggressive at filtering out unwanted email. Unfortunately, a lot of top quality email, much which customers had subscribed to, got caught in spam filters. Deliverability rates of email marketing campaigns dropped precipitously and the entire medium has lost a number of its effectiveness. The web result is that direct mail, good old fashioned printed offers sent through the USPS, has made somewhat of a comeback. The death of direct mail was highly exaggerated.
Something similar will probably happen to social media marketing marketing and I think it's already started. Like, I get many emails telling me that folks have started to follow along with me on Twitter. These emails contain no details about my new fans, merely a cryptic user name, which I can click on if I do want to see who it is. What I can see is that a growing number of these "followers" are providers of porn and are most likely signing up to follow along with tens of thousands of unsuspecting Twitter users like me. If this continues unchecked, I won't be considered a Twitter user for long because, as it turns out, I'm not actively seeking more junk mail in my in box. I suspect you are not, either.
My own, personal company has yet to generate any business from our social media marketing efforts. "Old" methods like telephone calls, emails, speaking at conferences and networking still drive most of our business. When I started Real Results Marketing five and a half years back, I resolved to undergo my contacts and either email or telephone people in my network every month. To this day, most of the business opportunities we uncover happen through this kind of work and former colleagues are still the richest source of consulting deals. It's a real struggle sometimes to produce myself take time out of an active day to produce those calls or send those emails, but they've proven so vitally important to your revenue stream that I don't dare let up on these efforts.
I realize that most businesses can't count on the founder's professional network as a primary type of demand generation. Bigger companies have their particular tried-and-true methods for driving growth. Your company may utilize a sales force, telesales personnel, advertising campaigns, sophisticated database marketing initiatives and other tools for creating sales opportunities and I'd argue that the importance of those approaches hasn't diminished one bit in the face of social media marketing growth.
Whatever did for you historically should be the primary focus of your sales and marketing. You want to keep plugged directly into social media marketing and, by all means, attend workshops, conferences and seminars on the subject. It might even be considered a smart investment to devote a headcount or two to doing nothing but experimenting with these exciting new marketing tools.
Someday, someone will master how to market effectively and measurably via social media. Once that happens, most of us in marketing should discover ways to adapt those discoveries to your businesses and utilize them to operate a vehicle sales and profits. Until that time, however, marketers should focus most of these resources on the equipment they understand to allow them to surpass their primary responsibility of driving profitable, longterm growth for his or her employers.
I've joked that I've become the leading advocate for "antisocial media marketing." I'm actually a big supporter of those exciting new channels -- not at the cost of marketing techniques which have been shown to work. Nonetheless, my less extreme position on the subject probably means I won't be voted the most popular speaker at marketing conferences in the future. I'll just to possess to be certain I stay one step in front of the lynch mob and keep making my networking calls month after month.
